Harvesting and Storing Cucumbers

Growing cucumbers is one of the best things about maintaining your own garden. If you do it right, the plants will produce an abundant amount of fruit over a period of several months. In fact, it may be so abundant that you won’t know what to do with all of them. Refrigerating cucumbers works for a time if you clean and dry them and seal them in plastic, but even that won’t keep them forever. As you harvest your cucumbers, the best way to store them for long periods is to make them into pickles.

Harvesting Cucumbers

Depending on what you plan on doing with your cucumbers, the harvesting will differ. For the vigorous salad type cucumber, you should let them get at least 6 or 7 inches long before you clip them from the vine. If they get quite large, they will lose much of their flavor as well as become chewy. If they receive too much sun, they may become bitter. Pickling cucumbers, on the other hand, should be picked when they are still relatively small –4 or 5 inches tops. If you want to make baby dills, you should harvest the cucumbers when they are an inch or less in diameter and just 2 to 4 inches long. Overly mature cucumbers should not be used for storing. Try making cucumber salad with those.

Storing Cucumbers

As mentioned, you can store cucumbers cut fresh from the vine in the refrigerator for several weeks if you seal them in plastic. Eventually they will start to go bad. The way to ensure that your cucumbers last a long time is to pickle them. Pickling is a process of sealing sliced cucumbers in glass jars with a vinegar based brine. In order to pickle your cucumbers, you will have to have a few items. You will need a several glass sealing jars (enough to hold however many cucumbers you have) with rims and new lids. You will also need a pot deep enough to cover a quart jar with an inch to spare. A special pair of tongs designed to fish very hot jars out of simmering water helps too.

Pickling Recipes

There are many different recipes for pickling cucumbers. The main ingredients in the brine are vinegar, water and salt. Whether you decide to make sweet pickles or dill pickles will determine the other ingredients. Fresh dill, garlic cloves, hot peppers, peppercorns, onion slices and various spices are just a few of the possibilities. It is easy to find a pickling recipe online. One easy recipe consists of the following:

• 2 parts water to 1 part vinegar (adjust for different amounts)
• ¼ cup salt for every 12 cups of liquid
• About 25 pickling cucumbers per 8 quart jars
• Fresh dill
• Garlic cloves
• Onion slices
• Black peppercorns

The process involves bringing the brine to a boil, and after preparing the cucumbers into slices, stuffing them with a few garlic cloves, onion slices and stalks and heads of dill into the sterilized quart jars and pouring the boiling brine over them. Don’t forget a small handful of peppercorns in each jar.

There are many different recipes for pickling cucumbers. As long as you make the brine with plenty of vinegar and salt and seal the jars properly, there is no wrong recipe. Whatever tastes good and works for you is the right way, and it’s the best way to store all of those cucumbers.